The Week That Was – February 17 to February 23

This week was the last sitting week before the Budget in April, and ostensibly the Election – and boy was it a cracker, as we found out Matthias Cormann hadn’t paid for flights to Singapore for a family holiday booked through the travel agency Helloworld. Helloworld is run by Andrew Burnes, the Federal Treasurer of the Liberal Party, and Cormann apparently booked the flights through him. Helloworld has taken the blame, saying an administrative issue meant that Cormann’s credit card wasn’t charged when the booking was made, but the fact that Helloworld had a lucrative deal with the government renewed shortly after Cormann’s trip with his family.

What’s more, it appears that Joe Hockey, former Treasurer and MP for North Sydney, and current Ambassador to the United States, may have also done Helloworld some sort of favour, getting their subsidiary QBT a contract with the government – it’s unclear what exactly the deal was but the head of the foreign service feels that Hockey’s actions were not in line with guidelines for how Ambassadors should act.

Meanwhile, Julie Bishop announced that she will be quitting parliament at the next election. She had said that she would stay on for stability, but many believed this would not be the case. Bishop has been in parliament for 21 years, eleven of those as Deputy Liberal leader under Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull (both as opposition leader and as PM) and Tony Abbott. She has stipulated that her replacement in her electorate of Curtin should be a woman, and I think the Liberals will probably make sure of that, or they’ll never hear the end of it.

This week Agriculture Minister David Littleproud was in hot water over comment he made regarding milk prices. This week Woolworths announced it would increase milk prices to help farmers, and when Coles and Aldi said they wouldn’t Littleproud said people should boycott the two supermarkets in favour of Woolworths. Only problem is at the start of the week David Littleproud held shares in Woolworths, which means that he would benefit from a boycott of other supermarkets. Littleproud sold his shares mid-way through the week when someone looked through his interests, and the money – about $750 – he made from that sale is going to drought relief.

There are questions over whether an arms manufacturer who receives grants from the federal government has been selling arms made under these grants to the Saudi Arabian government. The UK and US have restricted arms sales to Saudi Arabia after their military was accused of war crimes in the Yemeni civil war and after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but Australia has continued trade. There are concerns that the equipment the company was making will be used by Saudi forces in Yemen, and the Department of Defence and the company have not been able to guarantee that the Saudi military won’t.

This week the Aged Care Royal Commission revealed that those approved for Home Care packages are waiting up to two years and sometimes longer for service providers to get to them. These service providers also seem to be more interested in money rather than the care of their patients, with one company charging $2,100 a month just for ‘case management’. It was also revealed that the Federal Health Department froze aged care funding, suspicious that aged care providers were trying to over-claim for patients in order to take in more money, but no analysis was done to see if that was actually the case. The aged care industry body has also recognised that care could be better, and while they are on board with starting a register of workers in order to weed out problematic staff, they don’t want legislated staff-to-patient ratios.

Finally this week, Scott Morrison was in Auckland to meet with Jacinda Ardern, where the New Zealand government again offered to settle asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru, and again Australia declined. Ardern also said that the current policy of deporting New Zealand citizens from Australia, especially those who have only know life in Australia, was becoming corrosive in the relationship between Australia and New Zealand.

Tweet of the Week

The end of contrition #InsidersExtra #Insiders @barriecassidy #auspol pic.twitter.com/jTMo0gUpk1

— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) February 21, 2019

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Annabel Crabb on Julie Bishop – ABC Online

The issues surrounding $1 a litre milk – ABC Online

Three Weeks That Were – May 13 to June 2

Yep, I worked two Sundays in a row again – that’s the joy of retail – so here’s a list of some of the things that happened in politics.

1. Liberal MP Jane Prentice has lost pre-selection in her seat to a man, making many Liberal women very, very concerned. Warren Entsch is also worried and concerned, but that’s normal for Warren Enstch, because he’s probably one of the nicest, most accepting people in parliament. Meanwhile Craig Laundy is implying the person who will now be the candidate in the seat may have been partaking in branch stacking.
2. There are continuing concerns over the standards of care at residential care facilities (i.e. Nursing Homes) after revelations that some facilities are failing several benchmarks.
3. There are calls to encourage refugees to come to small country towns rather than the big cities in order to fill job shortages. While there are concerns that some may face problems with the isolation in some of these towns, many employers seem willing to take people on.
4. There a questions over how Australia plans to deal with waste now that China has stopped taking in other nations’ rubbish (yes, apparently Australia has been sending some of our rubbish to China for years). There a questions over whether Australia should have a Pay As You Throw system, or burn some of our rubbish to add to the electricity grid.
5. Focus in the Banking Royal Commission has moved to how banks have been treating small businesses. ANZ has confessed to misconduct, NAB has conceded it forced a business loan client to pay off his debt with the sale of his home, and the Commonwealth Bank has admitted to charging double the amount of interest they were entitled to.
6. Around 200 athletes that attended the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April have now applied for temporary protection visas. Another 50 athletes have officially over-stayed their visas.
7. Operation Augury – the mission to the Philippines to help the Philippine Army with the fight against ISIS in the city of Marawi – has all of a sudden become a very quiet operation shrouded in secrecy.
8. Several Liberal parliamentarians are trying to get a private members bill through parliament to ban the live export of animals during the Northern Hemisphere Summer, after vision of conditions on a sheep live export ship became public a few weeks back. Other Liberals have pushed for more regulation rather than a full on ban, and that is what Minister David Littleproud ended up announcing.
9. Pauline Hanson has announced that her party will no longer support company tax cuts – making it incredibly hard for the government to now pass the bill through the senate. Apparently, Hanson has been asking for way too much in return and the liberals can’t give it to her so she isn’t going to help them. But…
10. …it appears that either the whole party was not aware, or NSW Senator Brian Burston has decided not to go with the party, as he has announced that he will support the government’s company tax cuts. Pauline Hanson is very upset – she had one heck of an interview on SKY News – and told Burston to resign. He won’t resign and Hanson is yet to sack him so, we’ll have to watch this space.
11. Canning MP Andrew Hastie has revealed that Chau Chak Wing – a prolific donor to both parties and the name sake of a university building at the University of Technology, Sydney – has been named in a UN bribery investigation.
12. The day for the 5 by-elections – dubbed Super Saturday – has been announced as July 28. That’s a nine week campaign, leaving these seats without representation for over 80 days. While the AEC and the Liberals say that date has been chosen to avoid school holidays, so as not to disadvantage voters, Labor is very angry. July 28th is the weekend Labor is having their national conference, and while they have since deferred the date of the conference, they felt like the selection of that date was politically motivated.
13. Speaking of Super Saturday – the Liberals have announced that they will not be contesting the two safe Labor seats in WA in order to preserve their election war chest (i.e. They are unlikely to win and they shouldn’t be throwing money at a futile endeavour), while Bob Katter is helping Rebekha Sharkie out with costs for her campaign in the seat of Mayo, as she takes on Liberal candidate Georgina Downer (daughter of former foreign Minister Alexander Downer).
14. The Government is and the Opposition are currently fighting over each other’s respective tax plans. The Liberal tax plan costs the government more, but will take longer to implement, with the highest tax bracket benefitting later on. The Labor plan will be cheaper and faster to implement but provides less relief to the highest paid workers. Meanwhile, Amazon has announced that Australians will only be able to access the Australian website from July 1, in order to comply with new online shopping GST legislation.
15. A review has called for the superannuation program in Australia to be simplified and made more transparent. It turns out many young people who have changed jobs multiple times have multiple super accounts, meaning they will have less to retire on in the future. There are also calls to make it easier for workers to stay with one super account for their entire working life.
16. Workers on the minimum wage have had a 3.5% wage increase to $719.20 per week. The unions are happy for the rise, but say that it is not enough to give workers a living wage. Meanwhile, employers say it will make it harder for them to hire people because it costs more to pay people.
17. The redress scheme that came out of the Royal Commission into Child Abuse has now had the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Scouts, YMCA and the Salvation Army sign up, along with all states and territories, except WA.
18. Barnaby Joyce is facing criticism for getting paid for an interview with Channel 7. He argues that, despite calls to respect his and his partner Vikki Campion’s privacy, there have been drones flying over their home and paparazzi everywhere, and because Vikki felt ripped off she agreed to the interview and took the $150,000, which is to be put into a trust for their son Sebastian.
19. Labor faced some drama at the Victorian State conference, when the CFMEU and the AWU teamed up to end controversial debates and end the conference early. Delegates were set to debate offshore detention of asylum seekers, an issue that would have revealed the deep divide within the party, and there were concerns that this would affect the five Super Saturday by-elections.
20. Independent Tasmanian Senator Steve Martin is no longer independent, having joined the Nationals. The former Mayor of Devonport, who got in on the Jacqui Lambie ticket after Lambie had to quit due to Section 44, was sacked from the party when he refused to step aside for her. Since coming to parliament, he’s made friends with the Nationals and found he shares their views and so he joined them.
21. Michaelia Cash has received a subpoena from the federal court, calling her to give evidence regarding the AWU raid scandal, in which one of Cash’s staffers tipped the media off to raids being carried out at AWU offices. Cash is trying to get the subpoena thrown out, which is just a little suspicious.

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Hamish MacDonald on the Barnaby Joyce interview – SMH

Jessica Harmsen on being pregnant on TV – ABC Online